Last week, San Francisco-based start-up Activeweave launched an exciting new product called Stickis.  At first glance, Stickis looks like any other web overlay and annotation tool (i.e. Google Notebook, Trailfire, Fleck, Diigo, etc.), but dig a little deeper and you’ll see that Stickis does more.  If it reaches critical mass, Stickis could revolutionize the way that people interact with the web and each other.  Unlike popular social networking sites like MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, LinkedIn, Cyworld, etc., which require users to interact with each other within the confines of a specific website, Stickis allows users to interact with people in their network anytime and anywhere on the web.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with web overlay, traditional annotation tools have been around for a while.  These tools are browser plug-ins that let you stick virtual Post-It-esque “notes” on websites.  One of the first and most notorious of these web overlay services was the now defunct “Third Voice,” which many likened to “web graffiti”.  One of the problems with Third Voice was that it lacked privacy features, which critics argued, exposed everyone with Third Voice’s plug-in to potentially lewd and libelous commentary. In 2001, reporting on the backlash to this criticism, Wired reported:

Third Voice couldn’t generate enough advertising revenue to raise consumers’ awareness of its free service, and it couldn’t generate enough consumer awareness to raise the advertising revenue it needed to stay in business.

Web overlay/annotation tools have come a long way since the missteps of Third Voice.  Since then, the web has seen significant technological advances – especially in the areas of privacy management, web search/organizing content, and social networking.   Stickis incorporates several advanced features in these areas into a product that not only free but highly functional, innovative, and easy to use.

One thing that makes Stickis different than its competitors is the way that the service is structured.  Stickis is organized around “channels,” which are groups of Stickis notes published by a particular user.  Anyone can set up a channel – a private individual, a blogger, an organization, a website, or a company.  (Yelp and OpenTable San Francisco are two of the first companies  to have Stickis channels.)  Users can subscribe to new channels or unsubscribe from their existing channels at any time. Similarly, “channel” owners control the privacy of their content and are able to ensure which of their Stickis notes are shared with which of their subscribers.

Here’s how Stickis works today:

• Register at Stickis.com.
  • Pick a nickname/ username
    
  • Enter your email address
  • Select the channels you’d like to subscribe to
  • If you’d like to publish a channel, pick a name (mine is Socialmedia.vox.com)
    
  • Set-up your privacy settings
    • You choose whether you want to make your Stickis channel public or private.  If you decide to make your channel public, you have control over which of your subscribers can see specific posts.  You can organize your subscribers into groups- limiting which of your Stickis are seen by which of your subscribers.  This is done by creating what Stickis calls “antisocial tags” http://www.stickis.com/settings/tags/
• Upon signing up, a small plug-in is downloaded to your computer and installed when you re-start your browser.  This plug-in does NOT contain spy ware and can be turned on or off anytime with the touch of a button, which appears in your browser’s toolbar.
• When Stickis is “on”, anytime you go to new web page, a small, unobtrusive icon appears in the bottom right hand corner of your browser window.  This button displays the number of Stickis notes that your subscribed “channels” have written about that web page.
  
  

  

  Corner-button

• • Unlike other annotation programs, Stickis notes are easily ignored if you don’t want to see them.
  • If you want to open the Stickis notes on a page, simply click on the button in the lower right side of your browser, and a “tray” containing a summary of each Stickis note appears (listed in reverse chronological order).

Tray

• • To get a closer look at a specific Stickis note, click on its summary in the “tray” and voila- the entire Stickis note appears as an overlay over the page you’re on.
  • If you want to add to a Stickis note or reply to someone else’s Stickis note, just press the compose button on the “tray” or in your browser’s toolbar, and start writing.
    
    

    

    • You can drag or drop URLs, Pictures, Icons, etc. into your Stickis notes.You can add ‘tags’ to each of your Stickis notes, facilitating easy searching. Similarly, you can add ‘antisocial tags’ to specific posts to ensure that only certain people see those posts.
    • You can also customize the look and feel of your Stickis notes so that they reflect your personal style.
• You can set up alerts that notify you when:
  • Your favorite channel posts a new Stickis note.
  • Someone writes a Stickis note on a topic that interests you (e.g. notification when specific ‘tags’ are used).
• To see step-by-step instructions of how to work with Stickis, click here.

It’s easy to imagine the different ways Stickis could be marketed…

• Individuals: Share your most / least favorite sites with your friends, family, the public, etc.
• Fans: Talk with fellow fans about all of the latest on-line gossip.  Meet friends who are going to up-coming shows.
• Bloggers: Enhance your reader’s experience by cross-referencing websites that you’ve commented on.
• Blog readers: See what your favorite bloggers are saying about the sites you’ve visited.
• Marketers/ PR people (for products, bands, actors, etc.): Stickis is a great way to engage with the users who want to hear from you.  Create your own channel and share exclusive information with your prospective and existing customers.  Host contests, on-line scavenger hunts, and more.
• Teachers: Create different channels for each of the classes that you teach.  Share relevant websites / on-line content with your students and encourage them to engage in discussions with each other about what they see on-line.
• Politicians: Reach out to your constituents and tell them what you think about what’s happening on-line.  Engage your staff in a confidential discussion about how to address leaks, negative comments/ allegations that appear on the web.

Stickis has the potential to become a leading social networking tool.  To succeed in this capacity, it must continue to evolve.  Activeweave’s CEO, Marc Meyer, agrees:

Today we’re very much emphasizing the annotation features and the ability to discover stuff. In the near future, we’ll be improving  people’s ability to connect more closely to their communities.

To read another review on Stickis, check out TechCrunch.

There are plenty of sites out there offering expert advice and answering your questions.  One of the most interesting of these sites is the Yedda beta.  Yedda connects “people looking for knowledge with people who have the knowledge.” The site varies from other question/answer sites (like About.com and Yahoo! Answers) sites in several ways:

• It is personalized…You plug in the topics/ tags that are of interest to you, and Yedda generates questions and answers from its community of users
  
• The program is smart… It links you to related questions/answers in other categories that are related to your areas of interest. It is self evolving.  Yedda adapts itself to the people using it. New topics and associations between topics are dynamically generated by the wider community.
• It is free!
• If you ask a question, you (and others) can rate all of the answers, so that the most relevant and thorough answers rise to the top of the pile
• It is exceptionally easy to use
  

Yedda is an Israeli-based start-up, and its no surprise that a significant number of the users are from Israel. However, there appears to be a growing international user base as well.  The number of questions/answers in my areas of interest were limited (around 60 questions in total in the area of social media, social networking, web 2.0, mobile 2.0, etc.), but they were articulate and relevant questions/ answers.  For example:

• “What is the best smartphone on the market?” (Viewed 103 times, 3 Answers)
• “What does web 2.0 mean to you?” (Viewed 143 times, 1 answer)
• “How do you see the future of Web 2.0?” (Viewed 217 times, 3 answers)

This site has a lot of potential, and I’d like to see the user base grow to a critical mass.  Check it out and let me know what you think by posting a comment.

Attention teenagers and overzealous social networkers with an predilection for giving strangers your phone number (despite your mother’s and my best advice):

If you’ve ever met someone who you’d like to start talking to on the phone but don’t want to give him/her your real number, in the unlikely event that s/he turns out to be mental, check out Jangl.  Jangl is a privacy insurance policy for people like you.  It gives users a way of getting in touch with others over the phone without swapping numbers.  Here’s how it works:

A) Go to Jangl.com
B) Make up a “Jangl ID” (like a screen name) and register it (along with your phone number) on Jangl.com.
C) The next time you meet someone you want to talk with over the phone but don’t know well enough to give your number, give him/her your Jangl ID.
D) When S/he registers on Jangl.com, you both get a proxy phone number on which to contact each other.  That proxy number re-directs calls from either of you to the other.
E) Neither party’s real digits are ever revealed, and either of you can turn off the number at any time.

I’ve not yet tried it, but then again, I don’t go giving my phone number out to people I don’t know (at least enough to guess that they’re not crazy).  That said, I can see how this “service” would be useful if you’re less discriminating about who gets your digits – especially in the US where people get charged for incoming mobile phone calls.